The veteran broadcaster and journalist, convicted three times and jailed twice for contempt of court and breaching suppression orders, is weighing up a run for election in 2016 on an anti-paedophile platform.

He told Fairfax Media on Thursday that, while he had made no final decision, he believed the support would be out there.

Derryn Hinch is set to announce he is running for the Senate in the 2016 federal election.

Photo: Penny Stephens

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"I'm seriously considering it," he said from Darwin where he is filming a segment for Channel Seven's Sunday Night program.

"Why I'm considering it is because we got such a great reaction to the jail to justice walk."

In 2014, after his release from Victoria's Langi Kal Kal prison, he walked 180 kilometres from the jail to the Victorian Parliament to present a petition of 130,000 signatures calling for a national public register of convicted paedophiles.

Mr Hinch is a longtime advocate for unmasking sexual predators in the community and has gone to jail for defying the courts over the issue.

Hinch arrives at court to face charges of contempt over the naming of a sex offender in 2013.

Photo: Justin McManus

In 2011, he was sentenced to five months' home detention after defying a court order to name two serial child sex offenders at a Name Them and Shame Them rally in 2008. He spent 12 days in jail in 1987 for naming a paedophile priest.

The unrivalled legal protection of Parliamentary privilege would allow a future senator Hinch to pursue a campaign to bring sex offenders to public attention.

Hinch by Stan Barnett.

There is also speculation in Victoria that he could form his own political party to run candidates in other states and territories but Mr Hinch poured cold water on that, saying one issue parties had struggled in the past.

Fairfax Media has established that Mr Hinch has already reached out to minor party figures in Victoria ahead of making his candidacy official.

Fiona Patten, a friend of Mr Hinch's and the Sex Party's first Victorian Upper House MP, indicated there would likely be a preference swap between her party and the broadcaster.

"Derryn and I are in furious agreement on a number of issues and I think we will work together in the upcoming [federal] election," she said.

Ms Patten said the Sex Party did not have the same policy as Mr Hinch's on naming and shaming sex offenders but they were "on the same page" as "pro-choice, anti-government censorship, the right of adults to view what they want on the internet and dying with dignity".

The broadcaster, 71, who was given 12 months to live by doctors in 2010 before a life-saving liver transplant, would be seeking a six-year term in the Senate representing his home state of Victoria.

Like all independent and minor party candidates, a favourable preference deal will be crucial to his success, even with his established national profile built over decades.

NSW Senator David Leyonhjelm, whose party the Liberal Democrats will compete for the libertarian vote in Victoria, said Mr Hinch should not support the voting reforms being pushed by Senator Nick Xenophon. The minor parties believe Senator Xenophon's idea for voters to mark their own limited preferences on the ballot paper will prevent minor parties getting elected – mainly to the benefit of the Greens and the Coalition.

The so-called "preference whisperer", Glenn Druery, said: "Under the existing Senate electoral system Derryn Hinch, if he runs, has a chance of winning a Senate seat just like all other minor parties and Independents.

"However, if the Greens-Coalition deal gets up, apart from the major parties only Nick Xenophon and the Greens will have a realistic chance of being elected to the Senate. With the support of Xenophon, the Greens-Coalition pact will stop minor parties from being elected to the Senate."

Mr Hinch has been convicted three times, most recently in October 2013 when he was found guilty of contempt of court for breaching a suppression order by revealing details of the criminal past of Adrian Ernest Bayley, the killer of Jill Meagher.

The New Zealand-born broadcaster, known for his catch phrase "that's life", opted to spend 50 days Langi Kal Kal Prison rather than pay a $100,000 fine for contempt.

According to his website, Human Headline, Mr Hinch has been fired 16 times. The most recent was his sacking from 3AW in 2012 after controversies including alleging entertainer Graham Kennedy was HIV positive when he died, that late racing car driver Peter Brock was a wife-beater and that the late cricketer David Hookes had a mistress.

Mr Hinch has been married five times – including twice to Australian actress Jacki Weaver – and he recently split from partner Natasha Chadwick, 35, in March.